"I won the good behavior prize every year I was there."

"'When I came out of the bathroom twenty-five minutes later she was sitting at the secretary, smoking a cigarette and studying a memoranda book that had been in a side pocket of my gladstone bag.

'I guess these are the expenses you've charged up on other cases,' she said without looking up. 'I'm damned if I can see why you can't be more liberal with me. Look, here's a six-hundred-dollar item marked Inf. That's information you bought from somebody, isn't it? And here's a hundred and fifty below it--Top --whatever that is. And here's another day when you spent nearly a thousand dollars.'

'They must be telephone numbers,' I said, taking the book from her. 'Where were you raised? Fanning my baggage!'

'I was raised in a convent,' she told me. 'I won the good behavior prize every year I was there. I thought little girls who put extra spoons of sugar in their chocolate went to hell for gluttony. I didn't even know there was such a thing as profanity until I was eighteen. The first time I heard any I damned near fainted.' She spit on the rug in front of her, tilted her chair back, put her crossed feet on my bed, and asked: 'What do you think of that?'

I pushed her feet off the bed and said:

'I was raised in a water-front saloon. Keep your saliva off my floor or I'll toss you out on your neck.'"

-- Dashiel Hammett, Red Harvest